Why should you care?

ShopNest B2B team manages wholesale leads before they become Customer accounts — CRM schema captures pre-sale interactions.

See it live — copy this example

Paste into a .NET project with EF Core packages, then run with LocalDB/SQL Server (dotnet ef / dotnet run).

public class Lead { public int Id { get; set; } public string Company { get; set; } = ""; public string Stage { get; set; } = "New"; public decimal EstimatedValue { get; set; } }
public class Activity { public int Id { get; set; } public int LeadId { get; set; } public string Type { get; set; } = "Call"; public DateTime At { get; set; } public string Notes { get; set; } = ""; }

var pipeline = await db.Leads
    .GroupBy(l => l.Stage)
    .Select(g => new { Stage = g.Key, Count = g.Count(), Value = g.Sum(l => l.EstimatedValue) })
    .ToListAsync();

What happened?

• Lead has Stage for pipeline.
• GroupBy aggregates deal count and value per stage for sales dashboard — single SQL aggregation.

Practice next

1. Model Lead, Activity, and optional link Lead.ConvertedCustomerId.
2. Index Stage for pipeline queries.
3. Log Activity on every sales touchpoint.
4. Add Deal entity with expected CloseDate and probability.
5. Query leads with no activity in 30 days for follow-up job.

Remember

CRM: Lead, Activity, pipeline Stage. GroupBy powers funnel metrics. Convert lead to Customer at win.

ShopNest B2B pipeline

Sales ops dashboard Groups Leads by Stage for weekly standup using EF aggregation.

Outcome: Leadership sees pipeline value without Excel exports from SQL.